Snaccusation

I was six years old in the summer of 1967 when my father, in his infinite wisdom, decided to purchase a used Rambler station wagon—a vehicle so mechanically challenged it made the Titanic look like a robust sea vessel. This car was less of an automobile and more of a rolling disaster waiting to happen. The peak of its misadventures came while we were crossing the Grapevine, when the Rambler decided it had had enough of life on the open road and broke down in the middle of nowhere. We were marooned in Bakersfield, that parched, desolate wasteland of eternal sun, for an entire day while a mechanic worked on our mechanical abomination at a gas station attached to what could only be described as the Chicken Apocalypse. With nothing to do but stew in boredom, I scavenged the vending machine for sustenance and emerged victorious with an orange Fanta and PayDay bars. These treasures, while delicious, did little to distract me from the endless rows of chicken cages that stretched out like a scene from a poultry-themed horror movie. My attempts to entertain myself by poking fingers through the cages were met with warnings from the mechanic’s wife, who was so spooky she might have been auditioning for the role of the Wicked Witch of the West. She dramatically presented her mutilated hand—now sporting only three fingers—and declared, “If people spent one day with a chicken, they’d understand it’s a filthy beast. I gave up eating chicken when I was a little girl. It’s a disgusting creature.” The way she spoke about chickens made them sound like they were plotting world domination from their cages. As I finished my PayDay bar, which I was now convinced was made of rat hair and despair, she scowled and said, “Those have rat hairs in them, you know. Keep eating and you’ll be on your way to the hospital for a stomach pumping. Be my guest.” Her cackle echoed through the gas station like the laugh of a mad scientist who had just released an army of mutant chickens. At that moment, I was fully convinced that this woman was a witch and that we were doomed to spend the rest of eternity in that chicken-infested purgatory. The only way out, it seemed, was a magical escape. Fortunately, when we finally returned to San Jose, my father, in an act of redemption, traded the cursed Rambler for the most divine vehicle ever conceived: a shimmering aqua-green 1967 Chrysler Newport. This chariot of heavenly design, with its oversized radio preset buttons that felt like they were straight out of a sci-fi epic, was my salvation. It was the car’s radio that made it such a standout. I lounged in the back seat, listening to Burt Bacharach, The Monkees, and The Fifth Dimension, basking in the glory of this automotive sanctuary that was, to my young eyes, the celestial shield protecting me from the three-fingered, rat-hair-proclaiming witch of Bakersfield.

This tale of confectionery betrayal and poultry-fueled trauma demands a term that captures the dark alchemy of childhood wonder curdled by the fear that my favorite candy bar had rat hairs: Snaccusation–the paralyzing dread that overtakes you when someone—usually an unhinged adult with three fingers and an agenda—tells you your favorite candy bar contains rat hairs, bug legs, or the crushed dreams of factory workers, and suddenly you can taste the contamination. You can never eat it again without imagining a stomach pump and a tetanus shot.

A Snaccusation isn’t just a rumor—it’s a hex. It’s when a PayDay bar transforms from nutty bliss into a rodent-flecked harbinger of gastrointestinal doom. It’s when the vending machine becomes a moral trap, and your six-year-old soul gets haunted by a gas station oracle with a vendetta against poultry and processed sugar.

Symptoms include:

• Involuntary shivers at the sight of orange Fanta
  
• Chronic side-eye at vending machines
  
• Nightmares involving chickens unionizing against humanity
  
• A Pavlovian gag reflex triggered by the word “nougat”
  

A Snaccusation isn’t about truth—it’s about the spell. One cackling witch in Bakersfield and your candy-bar innocence is lost forever.